


Dine Together

by jurassicspark (JurassicSpark)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Psychological Manipulation, Resolved Sexual Tension, Someone Helps Will Graham, Unresolved Sexual Tension, gray-area Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 08:56:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1682438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JurassicSpark/pseuds/jurassicspark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham's fantasies of killing Hannibal have overtaken his erotic imagination, leaving him lonely and isolated. What better place to unpack his struggles to achieve intimacy than in Doctor Lecter's office? </p>
<p>Part 1 of 4 - complete.</p>
<p>Takes place in late Season 2, pre-finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"You're lingering, Will."

Will Graham blinked when the devastated corpse of Doctor Hannibal Lecter spoke to him through ruined lips. The blood seeped back into the veins and the entrails slurped back into place, reconstructing his anatomy as the canvas of red-splattered white resolved back into the ostentatious and familiar surroundings of his psychiatrist's office.

Will's body tingled with a singular type of pleasure.

Hannibal sat across from him, eased into his therapist's throne as always, his poker face only a hint off-kilter. "What else is on your mind?"

Will stared into his eyes, resigned to the light that remained on inside them. "Only the long drive ahead of me to an empty bed."

"Still no one to keep you company? What about your night with Margot?"

"Margot is a bit... preoccupied. I'm not really her type. Besides..." Will ran his fingers over the wood of his chair. "...you've seen to it that I can't be intimate with anyone other than you."

The glint in Hannibal's gaze was so subtle, Will wondered if he were the only one keen enough to recognize it.

"What makes this intimate to you?"

"Would 'we kill together' be a good start?"

"You killed Randall Tier of your own desire. I recall that killing to you was a chance to experience a quiet sense of power."

"It was nice while it lasted."

"We find ways to take hold of and express any measure of power we can. Through wealth. Positions of authority."

Will withheld himself from raising an eyebrow as he listened.

"Sex," Hannibal continued, as clinically as he'd begun.

Will coiled his fingers tighter around the armrests.

"To deny that ultimately, we are all truly powerless when compared to the majesties and cruelties of God."

"If we're made in God's image, should I blame your cruelties on God?"

"Would that give you comfort, to blame God for the pain you experience?"

"No. I'd prefer to hold you responsible."

"You said that I'm responsible for your inability to be intimate with others."

"I'm not _inable._ Everything works. I don't like _why_ it works, lately."

Will felt another tingle ripple through him with his admission, from its unspeakable source towards his fingertips, sparking a sensation that made the hard wood of his seat into pliable flesh he could gash with his remnants of nails. He watched Hannibal intently for signs of intrigue.

"You are disturbed by a twist in your erotic imagination."

"You could say that."

Hannibal probed further with his maddening calm. "When you are trying to attend to the needs of your basic nature, do you fantasize?"

"Doesn't everybody when they're alone?"

"About me?"

Will smiled with a grim dare on his lips. "Oh, I always fantasize about you."

"About killing me."

" _Yes._ "

"Does this fantasy appear to you at times when you don't expect to think of murder?"

"Why don't you just ask me what you want to ask?"

Hannibal tilted his head. "And what is it you think I want to ask you?"

"Do thoughts of killing you _excite_ me?"

Hannibal paused as though to take a taste of Will's words before wholly devouring them.

"Do they?"

Will's eyes traced over the expansive study, painting splashes of gore upon the library shelves, the hardwood, the flawless upholstery, revealing the true colors of the costumed sanctuary as a birthplace of violent pursuits.

"Is this what it's like? To be a murderer? Do you end up dreaming of death all the time?"

Hannibal left Will's question hanging between them, neither confirming nor denying his implication. Annoyed yet again resigned, Will looked to the exit towards the kitchen, conjuring up a memory of the day's most surreal moment.

"Jimmy Price had a birthday party today."

Awkward attempts to relearn laughter filled Will's ears as he remembered joining the people he once thought of as colleagues, before they all came to be pawns in Hannibal's game of chess. Against the macabre backdrop of the FBI's morgue for aesthetic fatalities, party balloons and cheerful frosting.

"He felt like we could all use something 'normal.' It wasn't much of a celebration."

"Did you enjoy yourself there?"

"We had cake. He wanted to slice his own. All I could think about were slices of Beverley. My friend." Will narrowed his eyes. "Who was starting to believe me."

"It is a natural human tendency to think of death in times of pleasure. It is that fear of death that propels us to act, to make our mark on the world. In French, they even use an expression of death as the apex of physical pleasure. _Le petit mort._ "

Will sucked in air. "Are you afraid of death, Doctor Lecter?"

The slightest corner of Hannibal's lip curled up. "Certainly not of the little one."

Will rose to escape the tightening feeling in his body and wandered the office, searching for more of the suggestive pencilwork Hannibal had revealed to him in glimpses. "What do you think about? When you're... alone?" He paused by the grand desk and an inconclusive cluster of sketches. "You must think about me. The hell you've created for me couldn't spontaneously emerge. It had to be carefully planned, crafted, piece by piece. You must have looked at the whole of me and found every crack, every way to break me apart."

"Do you feel broken, Will?"

Will paused near the clock on his desk, taunting him with its perfections. "Shattered."

"When a bird hatches from an egg," Hannibal's voice came from close beside him, "it must destroy its shell to be born into the world."

Will turned to see Hannibal stepping towards him, coming to rest not far from his side. He smirked faintly. "Or a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis."

Hannibal nodded. "Or a lizard, shedding its old skin. Destruction is a natural part of transformation. You are transforming, Will."

"You didn't know what would come out of that chrysalis. I still don't know."

Hannibal stepped a pace closer. "You have yet to fully spread your wings. Only then will we both see how beautiful you have become."

Will flashed him a challenging look. "Is this beauty to you, doctor? Blood and chaos?"

"Without chaos we cannot see order. Through the storm that tears us apart emerges the clarity of what is left standing."

"I can't see anything clearly anymore. Except for you."

"What is clear to you about me?"

Will swallowed. "That you won't stop until you possess me completely."

"Possession is a means of control. Yet everything you have done has been of your own free will."

"I suppose I went into psych lockup of my own free will too."

"It was unfortunate to see you trapped in there."

Will smiled down at the floor, tightening his fingers into fists. "You loved to see me trapped. Until you decided I'd be more entertaining outside a set of bars."

"I'm here to help you, Will, not to seek entertainment."

"You're here because you've seen to it that no one will believe what you've done to me. Who else am I supposed to talk to about how I feel?"

"You've spoken about how you feel emotionally. What about physically?" Hannibal's eyes flitted to the the clock and back to Will's gaze. "How is your health, now that you're recovering from your illness?"

Will offered a wry smile. "Peachy."

"You're back home with your dogs. Are you getting enough exercise?"

"I wasn't aware that you're also my personal trainer."

"Exercise is not only good for the body. It serves the heart and mind just as well. The path to better mental health is well-tread by running shoes."

"I walk my dogs. It's really all I do at home, when I'm not having nightmares."

"Or fantasies."

"One and the same." Will turned and meandered back towards the center of the office, for a brief escape from Hannibal's magnetic field. "Maybe I should take up running. See if I could run away from my own thoughts."

"It is better to run towards a goal than to run away." Hannibal followed him part way, leaving him some distance. "What would you run _to?_ "

"Back when I was a teacher, I sometimes thought about running a marathon with all seven of my dogs." Will realized the mist in his eyes, but didn't bother to clear it away. "Seems so long ago."

"The marathon has an interesting origin. Do you know of it?"

Will turned back to look at his psychiatrist, who was setting out two glasses for wine. "According to legend, a Greek soldier was sent from the town of Marathon to Athens, to announce the seemingly impossible defeat of the Persians in war." Hannibal poured them each their fill. "He is said to have run the entire distance without stopping."

"Did they believe him when he declared this unlikely victory?" Will asked as he crossed to claim the glass Hannibal offered to him.

"So the stories say."

"And what happened to this tenacious messenger?"

Hannibal glanced at him, face partially obscured by the circle of his drink to observe its scent. "He collapsed from exhaustion and died on the spot."

"If I take on a new hobby, I'd like to outlive it." Will took a sniff of the wine. "Maybe I should just go to the gym. I hear they let you punch things."

"You are feeling frustrated." Hannibal paused for a sip. "There are many ways to unleash that frustration."

"I don't actually think they'd appreciate my eccentricities in Zumba class."

"The gymnasium is also of Greek inspiration."

Hannibal set down his glass to retrieve a book off his shelf and display a choice spread of pages to Will, a reproduction from antiquity of athletes in training, golden bodied against a black sky, and entirely in the nude.

"It was part of their cult of physical perfection, but it was also a place to discuss philosophy, music, and literature. The ancients explored their minds as they expanded the limits of their bodies."

"They _exposed_ their bodies," Will observed quietly. "Competing naked."

"Such exposure was a form of transcendence. At the gymnasium, they were no longer ordinary citizens, but tributes, with no barrier between them and the gods they worshipped." Hannibal turned the page to an image of another clothesless athlete, about to be crowned with a wreath by a winged goddess Will recognized as Nike.

"Seems uncomfortable."

Hannibal indicated the athlete's hand stroking over his own arm, the goddess watching over him. "They coated themselves with oil to prepare for sport. Surely their initial discomfort was soothed by the closeness they found to the divine."

Will searched the athlete's eyes, instinctively reaching across the millennia to sense what was in his heart, whether Nike's crown of leaves would feel to him like flowers or thorns. He saw sadness rather than triumph, a burden of holy expectation to bear for the man even after his sportsman's toil was done and he could wash away the sweat.

"I don't feel particularly divine when I'm naked."

Hannibal lifted his eyes to Will. "What do you feel?"

"...Soggy."

Returning the book to its place, Hannibal followed Will again to settle beside him, both of them leaning against the desk in a point of indecision between sitting and standing. Will looked down at his knotted hands, overlaid with a memory of bloodied knuckles. "I feel the soap in my hands that betrays how far I am from ever being clean."

"What about when you bare yourself to a partner?"

Will marveled at the perfection of Hannibal's placid tone. "I told you, I don't have any, thanks to you." He glanced at him with a small measure of resentment for the reference. "No 'Achilles' to my 'Patroclus.'"

"Then the only one who sees you naked is God," Hannibal said calmly.

"Does God watch what I do when I'm naked?" Will leveled his eyes on Hannibal again. "Does God know what I explore in my mind?"

"God knows everything, but keeps his distance." Hannibal returned his gaze with a suggestion of encouragement. "Only through revealing ourselves to human eyes can we truly come to understand our desires."

Will was suddenly aware of how little distance remained between him and the doctor, how it sickened and thrilled him.

"Are you asking me to strip for you?" he murmurred.

Again, that glint in Hannibal's eyes, almost imperceptible to any lesser student of the twisted mind.

"Some say an open heart requires an open body. Nakedness is the ultimate vulnerability. Exposing what we hide from the world, we are left with no more than the skin to defend us."

"So I'll be defenseless."

"The skin is both a frail and powerful barrier. It is easy to penetrate."

"I guess you would know."

Will held Hannibal's gaze, waiting for him to brush off, to deflect, to obfuscate, but the denial never came.

A dream of his doctor crisscrossed into his mind's eye. Hannibal's features darkened and his skin turned to ash. Horns splintered forth in a labyrinth that played worse tricks on Will than the standard explosion of demonic influence. They seemed to emerge from everywhere and nowhere, from Doctor Lecter and from himself. The points pierced the doctor in the chest and opened up fountains of blood that burst into being and fell into nothingness, leaving him soaked and in an instant more, uneasily dry. Still facing Hannibal, unmoving, with what Will perceived as a fascinated smile hiding beneath his facade.

That tingle twitching its way through Will became a throb.

He reached up for his shirt buttons.

 

=TBC= 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will Graham's fantasies of killing Hannibal have overtaken his erotic imagination, leaving him lonely and isolated. What better place to unpack his struggles to achieve intimacy than in Doctor Lecter's office?
> 
> Part 2 of 4 - complete.

Will stood before Hannibal in the center of his study, his suit jacket discarded upon the back of the chaise lounge. Much like any other moment together with Doctor Lecter, he was foggy on the details of how he arrived there, and of several minds about his own intentions.

One by one, he opened his buttons, and watched Hannibal watch him from his perch against the edge of the grand desk, as he teased his way to unveiling skin.

"The skin is the means by which we feel the world around us," Hannibal said, eyeing the path of Will's hands. "A garden of sensory receptors, blossoming as they are stimulated. Three thousand of them find a home in each of your fingertips."

"I'm overly familiar with how sensitive my own fingers are."

Their eyes met again when Will shrugged off his dress shirt, tossing it aside to join his jacket.

"Do your fantasies keep you from seeking the touch of another?"

Will clenched the base of his undershirt. "It's not exactly easy to plant new seeds when my garden is drenched in carnage."

He had to peel the shirt off as it stuck to his back and chest, and briefly broke his gaze with Hannibal to fold it neatly atop his other clothes, protecting the upholstery.  
Hannibal almost smiled.

"Your internal world goes beyond the visual. You can feel your imagined actions as though they are real. What are you envisioning now? What do you feel underneath your fingers?"

Will parted his hands from his open belt. "Only the lonely air."

"If we can liberate you from the troubling feelings that accompany your fantasies, perhaps you will no longer feel so alone."

"Liberate me... by rendering me helpless." Will lowered his pants to the floor, then set them aside, followed by his socks and shoes.

"You underestimate the hidden power in opening yourself up."

Stripped to his briefs, Will gestured with a touch of drama. "Am I powerful or am I overpowered? _Vulnerable_?"

Hannibal remained the inscrutable observer. "How does it feel to be so vulnerable in the presence of another?"

Will wrapped his fingers under his waistband and dragged down his last scrap of protection, balling his briefs up in his hand as he rose back up to face Hannibal on full display.

"How does it make _you_ feel?"

"I'm not the one who's vulnerable here."

"Maybe we should change that. You want to be my friend. Friendship is between equals. We can't be equal if I'm the only one who's vulnerable."

"I am your friend. But I'm also your therapist. This is an opportunity to explore your own desires, not mine."

Will played with his briefs with a whimsical smile. "If you don't control me, does that mean I'm in control? That I can put an end to my desires?"

Hannibal left the desk behind to approach him with deliberate strides. "We all feel controlled by desire. But we _are_ desire. An essential purpose of therapy is to discover what we truly want. And how to take it."

"I should just take what I want. Is that the rule you live by?"

"We have but a short time in this life. I prefer not to waste it."

"You don't like missed opportunities."

Hannibal stepped over to the chaise lounge. "I often ask you to close your eyes and imagine what you want to happen. This time, I will ask you to do the same." He scooped up Will's clothing with an air of familiarity. "But first I want you to lay down. Preserve and focus your energy."

Will peered at him. "Don't you want to cover it first?"

"Do you intend to leave a mess?"

Suppressing a smirk and ignoring a private flutter, Will pressed his briefs atop Hannibal's stack. "I have a tendency to sweat."

Hannibal's eyes glinted back at him. "We can continue this elsewhere if you prefer."

Will smirked. "Just trying to be polite." He settled down upon the pristine cushions.

Hannibal placed Will's clothes on his usual seat with care, then sat down beside his knees on the edge of the lounge. "Now close your eyes and imagine what excites you."

Will gazed up at him, with Hannibal's shadow cast partway across his face. "I don't need to close my eyes."

"You are no longer prone to hallucinations. That should mean it is a necessity for you to activate your imagination."

"If I had to, to see what excites me."

"Does my presence excite you, Will?"

Will swallowed, and waited until he couldn't sense a quiver in his lip. "I'd like you to explain to me why."

"We fantasize about what we truly desire."

"My true desire is to see your end."

"What stops you from killing me?"

"I ask myself that all the time."

"You seem unsatisfied with the answer."

"Lately, I'm always unsatisfied."

The lounge was already clinging to his skin, and Will made himself as comfortable as he could manage. As he settled in, he felt more self-conscious in mind than in body. His outward self merely reflected inner trauma. If he were clothed again, it would remain, just as his face would remain after breaking a mirror.

His nudity did not disarm Hannibal's steady demeanor.

"What would satisfy you?"

"Aren't I in therapy to figure that out?"

"You are disturbed by your fantasies of killing me."

Will cocked his head. "That's one way to put it."

"Is another way to put it that you are aroused?"

"I'm pretty sure you can tell."

"This feeling upsets you."

"I never saw myself getting _that_ kind of enjoyment out of strangling my therapist to death."

Hannibal loomed over him. "Last time you said you imagined slicing my neck open. Feeling my blood rain down upon you."

Will's limbs crackled like logs tossed on a fire. The interplay of light and shadow on Hannibal's neck read to him like a Rorschach test, with every interpretation a variation on extreme violence. "I have many scenarios."

"Strangling is even more intimate. In that scenario, there is nothing between your flesh and mine."

Will sighed. "Every time I find myself wishing you would just say exactly what you mean, I have to remind myself that we wouldn't be here if you did."

"What is it you wish me to say?"

Will pretended to chew it over, and turned away from the topic at hand.

"...Admit what you've done."

"What you believe I've done to you?"

"Not just to me."

"This is _your_ therapy. It's not for anyone else."

"So this is my time."

"Yes."

"I can use it any way I want to."

"Our purpose is to discover what it is that you want. To discover why you have these fantasies at times you do not expect them."

"I never _expect_ this."

"Jack Crawford asked you to use your gift to help others. When you greet the scene of a crime, you expect to invite the murderous thoughts of others into you. Are you ever excited by these thoughts?"

Will shook his head.

"But when you think of me, you are."

"When I think of rending you limb from limb," Will replied.

And he thought of it, his hands becoming bone saws and his feet dancing through dismemberment. Inside he reveled in it, and outside, he lay limp and sad save where his blood gathered, no point in recoiling from the obvious.

"Another scenario. Tell me, of all of these ways you have imagined my death at your hands, which is the one you are most drawn to?

"It's so hard to pick a favorite. They all have their appeal."

"You feel discomfort at the way your body reacts to these thoughts."

"I feel appalled."

Hannibal turned further towards him, taking more space on the lounge. "Disgust and desire are both forms of arousal. They are wired into the same area of the brain. It is the reason why traffic builds up around a car accident as everyone slows down to see. We humans are drawn to that which we revile in the same physiological way we are drawn to that which inspires our lust. We often confuse the two. What you believe to be revolting to you may be what you most crave."

"And what I believe I covet, I may loathe."

"Only by journeying deeper into your daydreams can we come to know which is which."

"And you're going to accompany me dressed like that?" Will curled in onto his side, his knees pressing against Hannibal's suit. "Doesn't seem fair."

"To dress otherwise would be breaking the boundaries between doctor and patient,” Hannibal said, unmoving beside him.

"And this isn't?"

"We are exploring your own divisions. To reconcile your fantasies and your fears. The framework of therapy is a means to achieve that goal."

"Alana doesn't think you and I have any boundaries at all."

"Would you prefer to think of Alana when you are on your own?"

"I would prefer to not be on my own. But you've made sure I will be."

"Whenever you are feeling lonely, you can always come to me. My office is always open to you."

Will peeled himself away from their easy closeness and escaped to the windows. His stomach churned as his body burned; a much too familiar feeling. He turned to face the doctor again, the grey sky beyond a backdrop to his bare form. Hannibal stood beside the chaise lounge in his colorful trappings. Will glowered at his pocket square. "This finally seems awkward."

"You are unsettled by a perception of the imbalance of power."

"If I'm defenseless like this, it's hardly a perception."

"Then this is a visual representation of the way you feel. Powerless over the desires you perceive to control you."

"Your power over me goes far beyond keeping your clothes on. Consider this the tip of the iceberg."

"You associate this moment with imagery that evokes coldness. Perhaps a way of denying your true temperature."

Will smirked through a frown. "You think I have a fever, Doctor?"

"A medical doctor would say that an elevated sensation of heat is typical when considering thoughts of an arousing nature."

Hannibal's even, sassless tone annoyed Will. He took a step closer. "And what would a psychiatrist say?"

"Just as your fantasies take many forms, there are many forms of therapy. It's not uncommon for patients who are disabled or otherwise incapable of achieving intimacy to seek out therapeutic touch."

"I told you, I'm not _incapable_. I'm just... _isolated_."

"Isolation from touch is detrimental to the soul. There is a hierarchy of needs, a pyramid of psychological well-being. Before we can truly pursue the higher self, we must serve the more fundamental need for human connection."

Will began a slow return to the lounge. "Are you licensed for this style of treatment?"

"I have studied many fields. I can advise you that you may find it helpful to follow a hands-on approach."

"What happened to boundaries?"

"You yourself questioned the idea."

Close enough now to reach that pocket square and stuff it down Hannibal's throat, Will came to a stop, fingers curled against his thighs, a small bead of sweat trickling down his temple. "What if I like it?"

"Most people like some form of touch. To touch, and to be touched."

"If most people had dreams like I do, I would be out of a job. Jack wouldn't need my help, and I wouldn't be... unique enough to _interest_ you." Will shifted his dark gaze back to Hannibal's unflappable features. "You touch Alana. Are you only doing it to hurt me, or is she a substitute? Do you wish I were there instead?"

"Do I ever touch you, in these fantasies? Or is it only you touching me?"

"You never fight back."

"You are always the active partner."

"I'd like to think that if I killed you, it would be on my terms."

"And what are your terms?"

Will balled his hands into fists. "That for once, you simply _take_ pain. You don't get to inflict it."

"I feel a great deal of pain whenever you pull back from our friendship."

_Friendship_. Hannibal had distorted that word forever, but worse, some part of Will understood its new meaning. Glaring mostly at himself, he returned to the view of the cloudy grey sky that failed to muster up a storm. "I told you that friends are equals."

"To see me as your friend, you must see me on the same level. But right now you are my patient. Perhaps there is a way to level that playing field."

The grey sky silhouetted Will when he looked back towards Hannibal in all his finery. Beyond him he saw books massive enough to serve a fatal beating. A metal desk lamp that could crush a skull with enough enthusiasm. The clock beside it on the grand desk, heavy and solid enough to ruin a life.

"You want to feel in control of your desires, not controlled by them," Hannibal said.

Will felt his own pulse race through him. "What do you propose?"

"You could enact one of your fantasies."

 

=TBC=


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will Graham's fantasies of killing Hannibal have overtaken his erotic imagination, leaving him lonely and isolated. What better place to unpack his struggles to achieve intimacy than in Doctor Lecter's office?
> 
> Part 3 of 4 - complete.

"Kill you now... Or wait until I can prove what you've done."

Will paced Hannibal's study, eyeing its catalog of creative murder weapons as he played with the doctor's proposal. Curtains for a noose, a ladder for a spine-shattering fall, an elk's figurine to leave an unquestionable mark...

He was growing accustomed to walking around naked the way he was growing accustomed to his own madness; discomfitted by his easy adjustment.

"You don't need to commit the act to experience what it would be like," Hannibal said, observing his wandering from beside the chaise lounge. "Your own imagination is proof of that."

"Pretend to kill you." Will smirked at the carpet. "I don't think I'd show up to a murder in even less than my underwear."

"You can do whatever's comfortable for you."

"What's comfortable for me..."

"But it may be simplest to consider the scenario where you strangle me to death. Easier to suspend your disbelief."

"Easier to get carried away."

The invitation was too tempting to turn down. That was just as Will had intended it. Or just as Hannibal had intended it for him. How far down the rabbit hole could they lead each other before only one emerged? Will's head prickled and his own shadow outlined horns. Hannibal was yet unkillable, but he ached to try it.

Will came to a stop beside Hannibal's customary seat, his thigh denting against the arm rest. "Lay down." When Hannibal merely stared back at him, he pressed. "I'm the active partner, right?"

Hannibal followed his command and took his former place on the lounge, where he'd left a trace of his scent.

"If it's my enactment," Will went on, "you'll act exactly as I say."

"Some patients prefer to explore the unexpected."

"You've enacted fantasies with patients before."

Hannibal glanced over Will's figure above him. "Never without clothes."

"You're still wearing yours."

Will abandoned him there and went straight for the kitchen.

Hannibal called after him. "Where are you going? Will?"

His lure drew Hannibal into the dining room, where he met him with a knife clasped in one hand. A true chef's knife, sharpened like a razor and weighty enough to cleave the toughest meat. Will flashed it in the dim light.

Hannibal eyed the knife. "This is a different scenario."

"I'm still leaning towards strangling. But first, I have to level the playing field."

Will crossed into Hannibal's space and dragged the knife down the slit of his vest, snapping the strings of its buttons one by one until it fell open. Something twitched in Hannibal's eyes that gave Will a rush of pleasure.

"That was an expensive vest."

Will slid the knife down to the dining table, adorned with candles and a clutch of flowers, hovering the point just above its gleaming surface. "This is probably a very expensive table."

For the first time, Hannibal looked ever so slightly unsure of himself, though Will suspected that even that slip was intentional.

"You want me to disrobe," Hannibal said.

"In my dreams, I'm no longer the vulnerable one."

Will guided Hannibal's undressing with the threat of his knife. Each inch of skin Hannibal revealed was an opportunity to find and open veins. Hannibal mimicked Will, folding his jacket over one of the chairs, then his dress shirt, his undershirt, his pants. Either that or Will had anticipated just how Hannibal might choose to strip, and foretold the method.

He savored the moment that held Hannibal in only briefs, shoes and socks, for how ridiculous he appeared that way. It was not enough, and he gestured for completion. Hannibal bent to untie his shoes and rolled down his long dress socks, then concluded by placing his briefs atop the chair's pile.

All the while his thighs were exposed, the femoral artery traveling in a split beneath their surfaces. Will felt the ache stronger now, tightening his grip on the knife, titillated at his thoughts of staining their pale flesh crimson.

He backed Hannibal against the table until he forced the doctor to perch on its edge. Hannibal had taken Alana from him, taken _intimacy_ from him and twisted it as he had twisted _friendship_. Margot's curves meant nothing to Will, but her wounds sparked ideas of what he could do to the one who had wounded him. Those ideas and countless others swirled in his head now, and the frailty of Hannibal's fully human body swelled his loins.

Will pressed on with the knife until Hannibal lay down with legs spread and bent over the edge of the table. Hannibal watched him with curiosity, with intrigue, but not with fear, even as Will maneuvered the tip of the blade down over his chest and tested its hard and soft places.

"You think I'm confused," Will murmured. "That I can't tell the desire to kill you from the kind of desire I want to take me over."

"You already feel taken over. Possessed. Because you cannot recognize this desire as your own."

"You made me feel this way."

"I can't make you do anything, Will. Not unless I had a knife at your throat."

Will caressed Hannibal's skin with the knife, slowly falling under the spell of its power as he followed the route of that tempting and fundamental artery. "What would you make me do? If you had the knife."

"In your mind, I always have the knife. Except when you dream of wielding it yourself."

Will settled his gaze between Hannibal's legs, teasing the knifepoint in a circle from thigh to thigh.

"You like this. Or you're revolted by it. So easy to confuse the two."

"If you're planning on drawing blood, I should cover up the table."

Will traced the knife under the doctor's most sensitive flesh, stiff and alive, twitching as he teased the closest centimeter of air from the root up.

"I can draw more than just blood from you," he said, savoring his own words as he dipped the end of the knife into the wet spot at the tip with forensic precision. He raised the knife up between them, turning it slowly until the low light emphasized the evidence.

Hannibal met his eyes around the obscuring blade with intensity to match Will's own. "There are tablecloths in the kitchen."

Will smiled. "Wouldn't want to make a mess."

There was a strange sort of sense in ordering Hannibal around in the nude, Will discovered. He knew the knife had no true power, that Hannibal could quit the game at any time and empty Will's hands with his firm and guiding touch. Instead, Hannibal played along and heeded Will's silent demands. They walked from dining room to kitchen and back, as Hannibal carried away the candles and flowers, clearing space to set Will's scene.

Will had first approached the kitchen with singular intent, but now that he had his weapon of choice, the rest of the room fascinated him even as it reviled him. So many flawless culinary masterpieces created here out of ended human lives. No, Will realized, Hannibal would never be that careless. Somewhere else, perhaps beyond a locked door or hidden down below, lay the cannibal's prep room. Perhaps the last sight Beverly had seen after he fueled her into suspicion.

In gut and heart, Will felt sick to the core, and all the rest of him was on fire, theorizing his way through Hannibal's practices. Here there would be nothing found out of the ordinary, nothing to give it all away. There would be a common explanation for everything, like the giant leaves collected on the counter by the mortar half-filled with whole turmeric. Like the glass jar of something solid and milky white he lifted off a shelf to confirm its normalcy, leaving the lid behind.

"Coconut oil," Will said, nose in the jar, following Hannibal back into the dining room.

"Unrefined," Hannibal replied. "It adds an unmistakable depth of flavor." He spread out an overly large tablecloth in such a routine fashion that his nudity seemed unremarkable. "I was cooking with it today. No other oil can withstand as much intense heat. The savory masterpieces of Thailand are rarely found without some derivative of the versatile coconut. It's safe for the skin as well, to soothe and soften distressed places."

"Do you want me to _soften_ you or do you want me to pretend to kill you?"

Hannibal smoothed out the wrinkles in the tablecloth. "The human soul thrives when we express our urges. When we suppress them, it creates tension. By exploring your desires, we can release the tension, at least for now."

"Until it builds up again?" Will raised the knife back towards his chest.

Hannibal leaned back onto the table, then under Will's direction, lay down across it, covering the better part of its surface like the body of Randall Tier. Will set the jar of oil down beside him and climbed atop him, kneeling above his hips, his hand beginning to shake from gripping the knife.

Hannibal stared up at him, his voice still even-keeled, but low and rumbling in his throat. "Is this your favorite scenario?"

"I think I like it better when I can sense the life draining out of you with my own fingers."

Will set the knife down at last, and a ripple of painful relief shot through his hand before he wound all ten of his fingers around Hannibal's throat. He felt his pulse beneath him, and how easily he could make it stop. The doctor's skin was cold, but still too alive. And he was too alive as well, too eager to quench his bloodlust, too ravenous with savage ambition.

"You prefer to be connected to me in my moment of death. To feel me expire. You have chosen my dining table for my final exit. Do you also wish to taste my death?"

Will pressed his hands down tighter. "Taste it... Touch it... Watch the light fade out from your eyes. Hear your last breath."

"Death also has a smell."

"I don't think I'll get to wait around for that."

"Even in the moment of passing, there is a scent to the living that is lost to the dead, a scent to the dead gained when they cease to live."

"Another pleasant fact you would know."

"Whenever possible, I like to slaughter my own meat. There's no better way to know the source of a dish. To ensure it will have the optimal flavor."

As Will looked down at Hannibal against the white tablecloth, it resolved into the background of Doctor Lecter's murder kitchen, a sterile and bone-chilling place as Will saw it. He was on his back now, flipped to lay on a metal table atop layers and layers of plastic.

Ancient pottery rested out of place all around them, depicting black and gold scenes of athletes in nothing but wreaths, wrestling each other beside the watchful eyes of the gods. Faceless Thai monks appeared in a circle surrounding them, hiding their missing features behind giant leaves. The glass jar of oil had followed them from the table. Hannibal dipped his fingers into it and coated him in preparation for tribute. He spread Will's legs and readied the chef's knife to pierce him and bleed him out, but not before trailing it all over his naked body.

"Will?"

Will closed and opened his eyes to return to the dining room and his pretend position of power, Hannibal underneath him with a look in his eyes meant to ground him. Will focused on his gaze. His hands were no longer on Hannibal's throat. In one hand he held the oil, and in the other, the knife, which he was playing over his own body as though indecisive about his finest cut.

"What do you think I'll taste like?" he mused.

Hannibal's eyes glinted up at him. "Do you wish to be eaten?"

"I'm sure you would know how to prepare me."

Will held out the handle of the knife to Hannibal, who drew it slowly away. There was a line between fantasy and reality, and Will was losing track of where he'd planned on drawing it. He collected a glob of solidified oil on his fingertips, examining its slow transformation to liquid at the heat of his touch for something else to hold on to.

Hannibal set the knife down. The sound alerted Will back to him, and he gazed at him, spellbound and haunted in his recurring confusion.

Their fingers met in the air as Hannibal caught the slipping oily mass before it could drip down onto his own chest. Will felt overwhelmed with sadness at the electricity of Hannibal's touch and how swiftly it cleared him of his fog. He curled his hand around Hannibal's and drew it to his chest, clutching it over his heart.

Then down, down, down.

 

=TBC=


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will Graham's fantasies of killing Hannibal have overtaken his erotic imagination, leaving him lonely and isolated. What better place to unpack his struggles to achieve intimacy than in Doctor Lecter's office?
> 
> Part 4 of 4 - complete.

Hannibal did nothing without Will's guiding hands. Kneeling atop him on the dining room table with their fingers entwined, Will led him over his chest and hip bones, leaving a gleaming trail of oil and the fragrance of coconut rising between them. He answered the ache in his groin with Hannibal's hand upon him, just as he would take himself when on his own.

He shuddered, not from the fire that burned harder within Hannibal's fingers, but from thoughts he devised in Hannibal's own mind of his defenseless skin, so easy to penetrate and carve up for a late dinner. Where was the choice meat on his slim offering? He squeezed his thighs with Hannibal's hands, then directed them to his glutteal muscles and their luscious fat. Leaving the doctor to examine all the sensitive nerves between them, he returned his hands to Hannibal's throat.

"This would seem to be outside of your scenarios, Will," Hannibal said in a low voice. "To reciprocate your touch."

"Just exploring the unexpected." Will squeezed against his carotid artery, deriving as much pleasure from sensing it as from Hannibal's examination. "If you were reciprocating, you would have your hands around my neck."

"You don't imagine me to fight back."

"I'm not imagining anything right now."

Hannibal left his oiled body to raise his hands up and mirror him, taking him in a chokehold. It felt validating to Will, a physical expression of the way he felt inside, trapped by a killer who wanted to control his every breath.

With his only leverage that very breath itself, and how much it meant to Doctor Lecter.

"Now we are equal," Hannibal said.

"If murdering each other makes us equal."

"Do you imagine a scenario in which we die together?"

"We seem to do everything else together. But if we're going to die at each other's hands, you're going to die first."

Will dropped from his perch to straddle his hips, swallowing his instinct to moan. He crushed Hannibal's hard shaft between his oiled skin and the doctor's rising and falling torso. As he slid over it, he released his throat and dragged his fingers down his chest, leaving red marks in their wake. Hannibal drew in breath, his eyes glazed enough to please Will that his therapist was no longer at his full composure. Yet while Will sweated and trembled above him, there remained only the most subtle contrasts between Hannibal's state of composure and of arousal.

It made Will all the more lusty for his violent demise.

"You want to experience my death with all your senses," Hannibal said, mirroring Will again with fingers dragging away from his throat and down over his chest.

"Except that I lack your keen sense of smell."

"Pheromones have a scent. We all smell each other, even though we may not be aware of it. It's a basic aspect of human attraction."

"You think I'm _attracted_ to you."

"You're wrestling with a desire that is hard for you to accept. The eroticization of death."

"I think most people would find it hard to handle."

"You don't believe yourself to be most people."

Will gripped his fingers into Hannibal's hair, pressing them against the thin skin over his skull as though he could hold his brain prisoner. He leaned down close with a challenge flaring in his eyes. "Who do you believe me to be? Who do you see? Your executioner? Your finest meal? Or your butterfly?"

Hannibal answered with confidence. "My friend."

"Oh." Will smiled with such pain he wore it as a frown. "You want _much more_ than _friendship_ , Doctor Lecter."

Will claimed his lips as though he could devour him first before Hannibal had the chance.

Stretched out atop him with the length of their bodies aligned, Will lost track of himself again in the burst of passion. Hannibal returned it with his tongue inside his mouth and his hands clenching at his hips. Returned it out of base need? He wasn't isolated like Will, nor the kind of psychopath who would seek this out for its own sake. Mirrored his passion to egg him on further? To show him who chased the carrot and who dangled the stick?

Will parted from his lips, enraged beneath his broken shell. His thousand yard stare resolved into focus on beads of his own sweat dripping down from his hair onto Hannibal's neck and chest below, ignoring the eyes that saw only him.

It was then he noticed the dull blotches and fine criss-crosses of red he'd left there. With the force of his hands, his remnants of nails, and the caress of his chef's knife enough to abuse---but not break---the most delicate layer of skin. He flattened his hands over the evidence of his power, and quivered at the thrill that followed.

This was _his_ fantasy, _his_ enactment, and he felt closer than ever to living out the dreams that lurked in his dark inner landscape. This was _his_ therapy, what was best for _him_ , and he wouldn't allow Hannibal to dominate him for one more moment.

"Do you ever dream of this, when you dream of ending me?" Hannibal asked, his eyes so full of warmth and connection that Will wanted to end him right him there.

"I dream of tearing you apart as you've done to me," Will growled through building tears. He pressed his oiled hole against Hannibal's hard flesh. "You pierce me for the last time and I claw your heart open. I feel your blood on my hands."

"Yet another way for me to die."

"I have so many."

"You imagine me to be inside you, your hands rending apart my skin, my final barrier falling. This is your intimacy."

"This... is _my design._ "

Will took Hannibal inside him of his own desire, on his own whim. If Hannibal was meant to skewer him, he would be the master of the means. The rest of Doctor Lecter would be his victim. He captured Hannibal's hands with his cock and stabbed himself with his spear. He beat and clawed Hannibal's chest until it bled and bruised, and he cried with relief.

Not even murder had made Will feel so _real_ as using Hannibal for his own pure and unfiltered debauchery.

He throbbed in Hannibal's hands and clutched his wrists to pull him away, determined to climax on his own terms. He pinned Hannibal down with wild eyes. "I said you had to die first."

Will reached for the knife.

The white expanse of the tablecloth seeped out to flood the whole of the dining room. Will could no longer feel the table underneath his legs. He could no longer sense anything beyond the knife and Hannibal staring up at him with concealed rapture. He knew all he needed to know, and nothing else ever had or ever could give him such all-consuming satisfaction.

He was Doctor Hannibal Lecter's killer.

Will brought the blade down upon Hannibal and carved him open, then tossed the knife aside. His world moved in slow-motion as blood burst out and hung in the air all around him like gravity had forgotten to exist.

Inside the cavity of his chest, Hannibal's pounding heart betrayed his serene facade. Will reached within the gaping maw and tore it out with both hands. He rendered it in two between them and tossed the remains back into his ribcage like garbage. As he watched the blood drain from Hannibal's cheeks and the life from his eyes, he wept with bliss and licked his fingers clean.

They tasted mostly like coconut.

Will's vision blurred and darkened until he could focus again. Hannibal lay underneath him in one piece, flecks of blood mixed with cords of white atop his chest, rising and falling with his breath.

Will felt limp inside, and dizzy, and suddenly aware of the pain in his knees. And the fact that he wasn't curled up safely in his own bed, where he could go hug his dogs and cry.

He rose and slid off the table. The knife was back in his hand. He left for the kitchen like a zombie, and took the knife to the sink to wash it, as if such a rote and everyday act as dishwashing could either undo his depravity, or make it seem just as ordinary. His fingers still tingled with the memories of power, stronger even than his wish to regret the whole night.

He could smell Hannibal before he sensed him in any other way, as coconut clung to both of them. Hannibal stepped over to stand behind him at the sink and rested his hands on his arms, as Will stared at the faucet's stream.

"The knife is still clean. Does that disappoint you?"

"There's nothing clean about anything I do. Anything I desire."

"You understand now that it is yours. That your fantasies are under your own power. The power to embrace them, to shape them."

"To act on them."

"By acting, you cease to fight against yourself," Hannibal murmured by his ear. "You accept who you have become and take control."

Will turned around to look Hannibal in the eyes, his puppet master and his victim, wearing what Will could only read as a nurturing smile. Will gazed back with a mix of attachment and despair.

"Have I spread my wings enough for you, Doctor Lecter?" he whispered.

Hannibal settled a hand on the side of his face. "You have only just begun to discover what you're truly capable of, Will. You have many more scenarios. Many fantasies left to explore."

"You want me to keep _enacting_."

"As I said, my office is always open."

"What about your bedroom?"

"Is that where you prefer to be next time?"

"Depends on how soon you'll run out of tablecloths."

"For you, I will never run out. You are just as welcome at my table."

Hannibal reached down to remove the knife from Will's hand with tender care and set it aside. Will simply stood there and let him do it, trying to piece together how exactly he had wound up naked, oily, and sweaty in Doctor Lecter's kitchen.

His plan to lure his therapist into his most revealing intimacy had worked---this was his plan, wasn't it? Yet it had revealed nothing to use against him except what he already knew---that he was the ultimate temptation for the Chesapeake Ripper.

He felt subdued and resigned and painfully far from lonely, and _everything_ smelled like coconut.

Will lifted his eyes up weakly to meet Hannibal's gaze.

"I'd like some Thai food."

 

They sat across from each other at the table sharing in candlelight and prolonged nudity. Their chairs were draped with matching cloths to spare the wood finish. An apron stained with Hannibal's blood lay discarded on the table's other end, purposefully, to refuse Will the chance to forget. Two large leaves decorated with rice and fish sat between them. Will averted his eyes from Hannibal's mauled chest and stared at the small but still elaborate plating, sad and hungry.

"Catfish rounds simmered in turmeric-flavored coconut sauce," Hannibal said, spreading a napkin over his thighs and taking up fork and knife to tuck in. "In southern Thailand, they prefer to consume the whole fish, flesh and bone."

Will took a bite. It was the most delicious Thai food he'd ever tasted. "Slower than takeout," he mumbled.

"By far. I began creating this dish yesterday."

"You didn't know I'd be staying for..." Will glanced for anything that would reveal the time as he settled in to his meal. "I don't know if we can still call this dinner."

Hannibal smiled in that thin way he always did. "A fine meal is meant to be prepared with care. To be savored when at last it is time to dine. And enjoyed in good company."

"Better to dine together than alone."

"Should I expect you to dine with me again tomorrow?"

Will looked to him with heartache and quiet excitement.

"At seven-thirty."

"Good," Hannibal said. "Come hungry."

 

It was approaching midnight when Will met with Jack for their usual secret appointment at his FBI office. He had cleaned up as much as he could, or rather, let Hannibal clean him up. But Jack still had a funny look on his face, like he could smell something fishy.

"Are you any closer to getting what you want?" Jack asked him, point-blank.

"What I want..."

"Evidence to convict Hannibal."

"I'm getting closer to him."

Jack frowned. "I need something concrete. How much longer will this go on?"

"I'm taking as much as I can, as fast as I can take it."

Jack seemed to accept that as he stacked up papers on his desk to clear out for the night, but he paused to peer at his protégé. "Be careful, Will. Whatever you're doing with your _therapy_... I'm beginning to wonder who's the fish and who's the bait."

Will said nothing. The silence lasted too long between them, until Jack chose to brush it off.

"Speaking of, it's been a long day. I could really go for some fish cakes from that Thai place right now. Only place around that's still open." He glanced at Will with an apologetic chuckle, leading them out of his office. "You just came back from Hannibal's. You're probably full."

Will just smiled.

"I'm satisfied. ...For now."

 

=end=


End file.
